Tucked between the concrete skyscrapers and office buildings of Seattle’s downtown lay the Olympic Sculpture Park, a green, grassy landscape featuring a Z-shaped gravel path designed by Weiss and Manfredi, that overlooks Puget Sound. Much like Earthworks of the 1970’s – which used landscape and the earth itself as a material for sculpture – Maya Lin’s Wave Field – a grassy park sculpted to have artificial hills in the form of waves – or Mel Chin’s Revival Field – a garden sculpted of hyperaccumulating plants to clean toxic earth, the Olympic Sculpture Park is partially sculpted from the earth and natural landscape to form a path on which to walk through. While the Olympic Sculpture Park features individual greater-than-life-size sculptures, crafted by various artists such as Richard Serra and Alexander Calder, the park as a whole acts as a sort of installation artwork. The park is meant to be experienced as an entire entity, making no distinction between the man-made artifacts and the natural yet artificially planted trees and shrubbery, each given a label with a title and description. This blurred line integrates the permanent and everlasting architectural sculptures with the growing and changing plant life. The park juxtaposes real time with frozen time, natural with the unnatural.
However, the Olympic Sculpture Park, unlike a museum, isn’t just about the artworks that reside there. And, unlike most traditional art pieces in a museum, the park isn’t just meant to be viewed. A visit to the Olympic Sculpture is about the time that is spent there and is meant to be an experience. The park is a place for families to leisurely stroll along the grass, athletes to run or workout on the stairs, friends to meet up and walk their dogs, or tourists to document the scenery. All these people who have visited the park, for whatever reason, have left a mark, evidence, from their time spent, whether it’s the impressions left on the grass or the pebbles that were kicked off the path.
Dispersed in the park are poppy and salmon colored metal chairs. These chairs are the only movable “sculptures” in the park, (contrasting with nearby Roy McMakin’s Untitled, 2004 – 2007 which features two immovable seats) and are the most obvious evidence of humans’ visits. I visited the Olympic Sculpture Park early in the morning to find these chairs meticulously lined up along a pebbly path and patch of grass, facing toward the water. To my left I saw two friends sitting in these chairs, catching up, and to my right a parent watching his child run amongst these chairs. I couldn’t help but imagine the thousands of people who, over the years, have sat in these chairs, gazing at Seattle’s iconic scenery. While these chairs were neatly lined up now, I knew that over the day, as the sun rose and set, they would have changed positions. The changing positions embodied the passing of time and visitor’s time spent at the park. People would surely move these chairs to sit together in groups, to sit in a new location with a new view or maybe to just move them out of the way and not sit at all. So I mapped out a day, speeding up time, moving and cycling through various positions of these peachy, metal chairs in a few minutes. I then photographed each position, creating a documentation of this act. Each photo represented a small point in time, and was now a permanent reference to a temporary moment. Of course these four different positions I chose are only a few out of infinite possibilities. Since the opening to the Olympic Sculpture Park, the thousands of people who have visited have moved these chairs into thousands of positions.
At the entrance of the Olympic Sculpture Park sits Paccar Pavilion, a building containing a gift shop and information about the Seattle museums. When I took a peek inside, I noticed another installation piece, Trenton Doyle Hancock’s A Better Promise. Along one wall was a large image of a hand with colored raindrops falling – in Hancock’s distinct offbeat, illustrative style. This large, vibrant space in front of the wall was filled with clear plastic boxes. Hancock issued a “Call to Color,” asking visitors to fill these boxes with various colored plastic lids, each box with a designated color. Over time, these clear boxes would fill up, adding bursts of color to the open, and well lit space. As these boxes filled up, more evidence of people’s visits were left behind. At various points in time, this installation piece would change, as more visitors came and more lids were added. At the time, I conveniently just finished my bottle of water, and dropped its lid into the bin of clear and white lids. This installation piece had changed since I walked in and walked out. I had contributed to this piece. Again, like Mel Chin’s Revival Field, which used environment awareness and restoration as a focal point in his sculpture, Hancock’s A Better Promise used recycling as a way to create art and decorate a space.
In this way, all installation artworks, including parks, act as a place to spend time, embodying a journey in which visitor’s must travel through. Over time, after the effects of hundreds of thousands, even millions of visits, and various weather conditions, the park itself, even with maintenance, will show change.  |
Zorah Fung, Untitled, 2012. Metal Chairs. Artist rearranges chairs in four different positions as a representation of the passing of time. |
 |
Trenton Doyle Hancock, A Better Promise, 2008. Paint and plastic. Installation piece. Artist Hancock issues a “Call To Color” asking visitor’s to fill the plastic bins with the appropriately colored plastic lids. |
 |
Richard Serra, Wake, 2004. Weatherproof Steel. Fourteen foot high metal waves create a sense of a space that the viewer can walk through. Simple forms cast shadows which change throughout the day as the sun rises and sets. |
 |
Alexander Calder, The Eagle, 1971. Painted Steel. Abstract steel sculpture refurbished and relocated at the Olympic Sculpture Park, becoming part of the permanent collection of the Seattle Art Museum. |
No comments:
Post a Comment